In article ,
"Bob S." wrote:

To others that object to this thread - then don't read it - real simple.

I object to other being mislead that this is difficult. It isn't. It is
easy and requires not special tools or anything fancy.

But
don't tell me that bashing your tablesaw into alignment is a good thing and
that wood moves. You can bash on your tools if you like, I prefer to find
out why they won't align and fix the problem - properly. As you'll note,
several others have advised him to return the saw.

The wood moves comment was with respect to the moron who things 0.0001"
accuracy is desirable. It is a waste of time. It wasn't directed at you.

If you do not understand why bashing is necessary, then:
Either
A) You have never actually performed this procedure on a
contractor-style TS
or
B) It took you an awfully long time.

In the odd event that anyone is reading this and would like to try it,
here is the trick:
Loosen the trunion bolts VERY slightly. Were people get into trouble is
they loosen them too much. Then when they re-tighten, the trunion moves
quite a bit. This is the natural outcome of the torque of tightening, it
is not "something wrong". By loosening them very slightly and using a
little force (trust me, you could bash all day with a rubber mallet on a
heavy trunion without any damage), there is very little movement when
re-tightening. This makes the procedure much much easier.



Past that, I agreed the miter gauge could be at other than 90° - as long as
the point of reference (miter gauge) is reset after making an adjustment.
It's not a wrong statement at all. Would the word "should" be substituted
for "needs" in the above statement clarify it any better?

Lets assume the left slot.

1. Clamp stick to miter gauge so that it just touches the side of the
saw at from.
2. Slide miter guage towards the back.
A) If the stick binds, then the trunion is twisted counter clockwise,
i.e the back of the trunion needs to move left when view from the front,
right when you at the back doing the actual adjustment.
B) If a gap appears between the stick and the blade, then the trunion
is twisted clockwise.
C) if it stays barely touching all the way through, then life is very
good. Stop now.
3. loosen and adjust as above
4. Repeat (1) - (3) until you hit the stop (condition 2 C)

it isn't any easier or more difficult if the gauge is at 90 degrees; in
fact it makes no difference whatsoever. If you don't see this, then you
haven't tried it.

How about just take your tape measure and measure from the blade to the
miter slot? How would you insure the angle of the tape was the same after
each measurement? My point was and is, set it at 90° and use that as the
reference. You want something other than that - fine but it doesn't make my
statement wrong.

Using a tape measure would be a disasterous way to do it. The whole
point of the above method is to NOT depend on miter gauge accuracy,
reading accurately, etc. The only thing that really matters is that the
miter gauge does not have any play in the slot.